Gamel

Thrill Jockey; 2014

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When OOIOO started in the mid-1990s, there wasn’t much evidence to suggest that the band would be any longer lived than the numerous other satellite projects rattling through deep space orbit alongside Japanese noise-rock giants, Boredoms. OOIOO (say it oh-oh-eye-oh-oh) has endured, though, and nearly twenty years and six albums later, the all-female quartet—lead by Flaming Lips LP namesake and Boredoms percussionist Yoshimi—have established their own voice, audience, and influence, long since transcending their origins as ancillary Bore-product. Gamel—which arrived last year in Japan on Boredoms’ own Shock City imprint and which is only now seeing wide release through Thrill Jockey—is OOIOO’s seventh full-length and also the group’s strongest effort in some time. Like the group's best work, it takes a number of heady out-rock ideas and lines them up into a fairly easy to digest mixtape.

Given their shared DNA, Boredoms and OOIOO mirror one another in a number of ways, particularly in their zeal for primitivist rhythms, psychedelic tones, and trippy fluorescent color schemes. But while the former has gradually evolved into a sort of high concept drum circle—with performances that often involve a seven-necked guitar and dozens of percussionists—the latter has consistently kept things small. For the past decade, Boredoms' sheer mass has forced the project to focus on a single schtick, but OOIOO has been free to float from sound to sound, with songs that sometimes evoke fusion-era Miles Davis, Konono No. 1, and the European prog-rock band Gong within the same five minutes.

Still, the best OOIOO records have always benefited from a central theme—be it kraut rock-style repetition (Feather Float) or tribal psychedelia (Armonico Hewa)—to ground the band’s ever-mutating sensibility. This time around, the glue comes via two metallophone players, who expand OOIOO’s riffing with melodies drawn from Javanese gamelan music.

The instruments—which are played by hammering mallets against brass rods tuned to microtonal scales—preserve Gamel’s percussive and propulsive core, but also produce strange harmonies and overtones that imbue the music with a heady psychedelic sheen. If you’re an anime fan, some of Gamel’s sounds might inadvertently trigger memories of Japanese collective Geinoh Yamashirogumi’s score for the film Akira. That music used a similar mix of sounds—synthesizers, alternate tunings, traditional instruments—and perfectly complemented that film's strange and quasi-psychedelic sci-fi style. Gamel is a little more organic and much more ebullient, but just as otherworldly and futuristic.

Prior OOIOO albums were, evidently, recorded by the band and then extensively tweaked and edited by Yoshimi in studio post-production, but Gamel was mostly recorded live. As a result, the music isn’t quite as crowded. Yoshimi has laid off the effects—echo, reverb, and synthesizer glop—and there are fewer hard turns and zig-zags in the compositions. For the first time, OOIOO actually sounds like a real, living breathing band.

One of the best things about OOIOO records is that they provide a way to experience a number of fairly culty musical ideas—prog rock, psychedelic music, and so on—from a point of remove. The band's nonsense chants and jagged melodies provide all of the weirdness without necessarily conjuring the established imagery and associations, be they good or bad. It's easier to listen with fresh ears and hear these strange sounds as something playful, unfamiliar, and approachable, qualities that Gamel definitely possesses.